Some Harkening…

I was reading from the Arrogant New Englander about his recent car trouble, and the subsequent way of venting his frustration. It reminded me of a time in my life when I really didn’t know where I was going, or how I would get there…till I actually arrived.

Back in 1974 my parents bought a house that had many fruit trees on it. Most of which were avocado, but there were apple, plums, oranges, grapefruits, and I could go on. If my memory serves me correctly, there was very little sunlight that came in thru the canopy.

One of the first things my dad did was start removing trees. He would usually fell the tree leaving the stump. My job as the kid was to dig the hole. I loved digging. Friends and I had underground forts next to big stumps all over the yard. Eventually we had to remove the stumps, and fill in the holes. All this digging was to prepare me for a bigger hole for an above ground pool that we pot in…but that is for another post.

Back to chopping wood. After the tree was bucked into manageable lengths, it was my job to stack the wood. I remember a time when I spent the better part of a day stacking the wood when my dad came out and told me that the stack was not right, and I had to re stack it.

I remember the words out of my mouth: “When am I ever going to have to know how to stack wood?”

Little did I know. One of my first jobs at guitar factory was stickering wood. This is at job of making a course of wood, lining up thin sticks perpendicular to the coarse and repeating. Each sticker had to be right over the top of the one below it.

Another job there was selecting lumber for production. I probably stacked over 500,000 board feet of lumber in my travels around the world.

At the time, neither my father nor I had any idea what was in store for me.

This was really the only time that I can think back to that was relevant, a little coincidental, and funny to boot. You never know what your life experience is setting you up to do.

Question about ‘stickering wood’? I have never done it, but I heard years ago that the stickering has to be done with the same wood that is being stack or there will be deep marks across the boards. Is that right?

-- "Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life" Solomon

Halltree,Not necessarily…We used 1/2 MDF cut into 1/2 strips. it was a long, arduous, messy process. Some wood like maple will get sticker stain. it’s caused by bacteria, moisture and time. sometimes it’s on the surface, or can got all the way through.

the last time I was at the factory, they had switched to plastic stix. they are made from recycled soda bottles. another good material for doing small, not so wide stacks is Masonite or HDF